When I first joined this program abroad, I was not sure exactly what I wanted to get out of it. I had vague notions: I want to gain inspiration for music, I want to learn about the relationship between art and religion, I want to better understand World War 2, I want to get a feel for the art world today, I want to know how to use art for activism. Many of these came together and became much more specific when I checked out the artwork in Documenta 14.

Documenta 14 has a myriad of artwork that should be worth describing and analyzing, but Forensic Architecture’s 77sqm_9:26min is the piece that I found most profound in this trip. This must be my third time describing the artwork in writing, but essentially it is a video installation, located in Kassel Germany, that uses modern analyzation techniques to understand, interpret, and analyze the murder of a Halit Yozgat, a Kassel Born entrepreneur who fell victim to a fatal hate crime. Halit was the ninth death in a series of murders committed by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-nazi group. The NSU’s assassinations targeted largely migrant communities, which means Halit Yozgat was killed for being the son of an immigrant and from turkish descent.

The killing occurred at Halit’s newly opened business, an Internet Cafe, which was located a short walk from the gallery hosting 77sqm_9:26min— a fact that tinged the atmosphere around the artwork. Many Kassel natives constantly crowded the artwork, which was a video installation in front of a single bench. The video was in German, but the bench contained several headphones, and only one was in english. This was my first hint about the meaning behind the artwork, that it is a piece that isn’t trying to advertise itself to the usual art viewers, and usual documenta go-ers, but to the communities most affected by the subject in the installation.

The fact that the murder occurred in an internet Cafe is essential for Forensic Architecture. It allowed the organization to create a virtual time table of when customers logged into the computers, made phone calls, etc, which ultimately allowed them to pinpoint potential scenarios of when the murdered could have occurred.

One of the main focuses of the video is to analyze the testimony of Andres Temme, a person who testified against hearing, smelling, or seeing anything during the murder. Temme did not report anything to the police, saying he had not known anything happened and that he was not in the scene during the events. Forensic Architecture’s timetable analysis was able to conclude that it is highly unlikely, and even unrealistic that Temme was not in the scene of crime. Forensic Architecture proved that Temme must have been able to hear the things he testified against– he would have been able to hear the gunshots, seen the dead body, and smelt the gunpowder. In addition, the series of tests performed reveal that Temme is in fact a highly culpable suspect in this crime.

Forensic Architecture reveals a myriad of hidden facts and important information regarding the investigation, murder, and Andres Temme. The police investigators had dropped Andres Temme as a suspect, and focused investigative efforts towards the victim’s family, and distant relatives in Turkey. State investigators tapped telephone lines, checked bank account transactions, and thoroughly interrogated the family. At the entrance of the room containing the main video, there are several smaller videos on ipads. One of them is an interview with a family member, who reveals the deep emotional toll that the family experienced for being targeted as a suspect when one of their family members had just been killed. In addition, the videos revealed that police investigators immediately crossed off ‘hate crime’ as one of the potential reasons for the crime. Today it is unanimously agreed that it was exactly that- a violent, repulsive hate crime.

The installation reveals a frustrating fact, that the family experienced victim-perpetrator reversal. Police investigators dropped the likeliest suspect, and targeted the least likely suspects. One of the entrance videos, analyzes hate crimes in the 1990s, specifically analyzing the arson attacks against refugee shelters. The video revealed that the state did not persecute the perpetrators in the 1990s, which encouraged for more attacks. The video draws parallels between the attacks then, and now, noting that both are reflective of institutional racism. In Yozgat’s case, the state hardly did more than antagonize the family and relatives in Turkey. The installation compares these analyzations, the fact that Andres Temme works for the state intelligence services, and his probable culpability, to frame a picture that makes the influence of institutional racism very clear, in addition to issues that lie in police investigations and the general state.

The installation is important because: it sheds light on how institutional racism hinders competent police investigation, how Andres Temme should be investigated once again because he is highly likely to be culpable or related to the murder, and how technology is a powerful tool for independent organization to criticize the State.

Forensic Architecture is not an art collective, or a group that creates art. It is an independent organization that uses the knowledge of  “architects, scholars, artists, filmmakers, coders, investigative journalists, archaeologists, lawyers, and scientists” to investigate “on the behalf of international prosecutors, human rights organizations, as well as political and environmental justice groups.” The investigation on Halit Yozgat is used by a tribunal that is trying to unravel the NSU complex, and other activist organizations. The work is a powerful interdisciplinary form of art that exists in the art world for the methods implemented (virtual simulation and artistic reproduction), and in the world of activism as a piece that unravels important issues. In addition it exemplifies a way to use technology to provide feedback on information distributed by State Institutions, and even demand for its reassessment.

Here is a link to Forensic Architecture’s website. There they discuss who they are, what other projects they have, and they have extensive reports on each of their projects: http://www.forensic-architecture.org/

Unfortunately, I only have images of the wall label, so I will insert an image from the Documenta 14 page to give readers a sense of what I’m talking about!